Marketing and advertising groups (and other, more malicious parties) are continually interested in identifying new ways to track computing device users. While traditional privacy tools may provide users with some control over how they are tracked, recent research has shown that unwanted parties may be able to bypass these tools by fingerprinting a user's computing device based on unique characteristics associated with the device's sensor output.
For example, researchers have demonstrated that the various sensors present in many modern-day computing devices, such as the accelerometers, microphones, speakers, and radios often found in mobile phones, each generate unique and consistent inaccuracies in their outputs. These unique inaccuracies may, in turn, be used to create a profile or fingerprint of sorts for a computing device that can be used to uniquely identify and track the device and/or its user.
Unfortunately, traditional privacy software and privacy settings may be unable to prevent this kind of tracking. For example, as opposed to web-browser cookies, which users may be able to delete, block, and/or monitor, any sensor or hardware component on a computing device that outputs a signal unique to that computing device may potentially be used to fingerprint the computing device. These vulnerabilities may present serious privacy concerns to computing device vendors, developers, and users.
As such, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for a more efficient and effective mechanism for preventing device fingerprinting based on sub-system output signals.